


Travel Lightly

by skieswideopen



Category: Life (TV)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Hints of UST, Other, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skieswideopen/pseuds/skieswideopen
Summary: Rachel comes home and discovers a few things.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magnetgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnetgirl/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, magnetgirl! I hope you enjoy this.

Rachel was in Paris when she finally called Charlie.

She'd spent the first weeks after her hurried flight from Los Angeles zig-zagging across Europe and Asia, moving from country to country almost at random, torn between anger that he'd sent her off with barely a word of farewell and fear of whatever had left him so frightened for her.

By the time she reached Paris, the anger had dissipated and the fear had morphed into a sort of automatic caution. She still looked over her shoulder and kept her personal details to herself, but she no longer worried about someone tracking her down or ran from every shadow. She suspected that whomever Charlie had sent her running from had either lost her entirely or couldn't reach this far. Either way, it seemed like she was safe enough as long as she stayed away.

It wasn't until the fear faded that the reality of her situation kicked in: the long months or years ahead, travelling alone, unable to really trust anyone she met, not even knowing who her enemy was. With that realization came a sudden, startling homesickness. (Was it strange being homesick for a place she'd never really felt at home in?)

That was when she decided to call.

She bought a prepaid cellphone from a good-looking man about her age who flirted outrageously with her and insisted on giving her his number, telling her she could use it to test her new purchase. She took the phone back to her hotel, where she sat on the edge of the bed, heart thudding nervously as she stared down at the device in her hands, one awful thought racing through her mind:

_What if he didn't pick up?_

Charlie had been scared driving to the airport. Scared for her, mostly, but she assumed that if she was in danger, it was because someone was coming after him. What might they have done when they realized they couldn't use Rachel to threaten him? Gone after Charlie directly? Gone after someone else Charlie cared about, like Ted or Aunt Jen or Charlie's partner? If Charlie didn't pick up, would there be anyone left to tell her what had happened? Would she ever find out what had happened to any of them?

Rachel drew in a deep breath and dialed.

Charlie answered on the second ring and she collapsed backwards on the bed, almost giddy with relief but stubbornly determined not to let him know that. She said hello and prepared to launch into her reason for calling—a completely fictional need for more money—but Charlie spoke first.

"Rachel?" His voice sounded strained, as if the distance between them had stretched it thin. "It's over, Rachel. You can come home now."

His words rang in her ears. _Home._ She sprang up from the bed, ready to grab her bag and head straight for the airport, but then she paused as something occurred to her. She'd called him. Why had he waited for her to call him? Why not call her? No, she hadn't told him where she would be, but he could have found her if he'd wanted to. He could have looked.

It didn't sound like he'd looked.

She lay in bed that night in the hotel, playing Charlie's message over and over in her mind. She thought about other things too. How tired Charlie had sounded. Why he'd sent her away. What it might have cost him to resolve the situation.

She booked a flight the next morning, calling Charlie from the cab on her way to the airport. He was waiting for her at the airport when she landed.

The first surprise on getting back was the discovery that Ted was gone.

"He went to Spain," Charlie explained, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that Ted would suddenly just decide to go to Spain.

Rachel wondered if it had something to do with that woman he'd said he was in love with—Charlie's father's fiancée—but Charlie didn't elaborate, and remembering his reaction to his father, she wasn't sure he would even if she asked, so she didn't.

The second surprise was how lost Charlie seemed. He'd always—the After Charlie, not the Before—been quirky. Odd. As if he saw things in a way that no one else did. Now, though, he drifted, restless and discontented in a way that she hadn't realized that this new Charlie could be, with all of his Zen sayings and calm acceptance of, well, everything. Or at least everything except Rachel spending the night with guitar-playing men, which she hadn't done since she got back.

She contemplated trying that again, hunting down the number for that guy or heading to a bar and finding a new one, but the idea didn't really appeal to her. She'd been angry before; this time she was worried. It seemed to call for a different approach.

If she were being completely honest—telling the absolute truth, as Charlie had once put it—she'd have to admit that her decision to return had been driven in part by her hope that with "it" finished, whatever "it" had been, things would be different. That without that thing pulling at him, Charlie would be more present, more there. That her own months of wandering would have changed her, too, erasing old patterns. That maybe, somehow, the two of them together could find the peace that had been eluding them both.

She'd known she was taking a chance, but she still hadn't expected this, this Charlie who couldn't seem to focus on anything. She wondered if he was different at work, saving his aimlessness for home, or if he was like this all the time now. Was she the only one who'd noticed? Were his colleagues covering for him? She wished Ted were still there, to talk it over and tell her if she was imagining things.

She was pretty sure she wasn't imagining that Charlie was avoiding her. A couple of weeks after she got back, he started staying out late most nights, only coming home after she was in bed. "Work," he told her when she asked. She couldn't get him to say anything beyond that. Why, she wondered, had he bothered to tell her to come home if he was never going to be there? Why had he invited her to move into his house in the first place?

She wondered if Charlie would pay attention to her if she were involved in a crime, and for a brief moment she was tempted.

On one of the rare days when she did catch him, she tried asking him what had happened, thinking that that might at least clarify the situation. Charlie replied with an aphorism on how time was just an illusion.

She tried focusing on building her own life, perusing college catalogues and job fairs, but it was like Charlie's distraction was contagious, leaving her unable to make even simple decisions about her own life. She went out for dinner with Aunt Jen and the few friends she'd made before she left. Each time, she came home to an empty house. Loneliness was a lot worse when there wasn't even hope, she discovered.

Finally, she gave up on the college plans and job applications and decided to see if she could wait Charlie out.

One night soon after, she woke to the sound of something crashing downstairs. She laid in bed for a long moment, listening for movement, and then ventured down carefully, phone in one hand, flashlight in the other. The flashlight revealed a redheaded figure straightening a chair in the kitchen.

"Hi, Rachel," Charlie said brightly, leaning heavily on the back of the chair. "I remembered why I didn't want furniture."

She turned the flashlight off and flipped the light over the table on. "I thought it was because you wanted an uncluttered life."

"That, and it's easier to get around when there's nothing to trip over."

She went with the obvious reply. "You're wasted."

Charlie tilted his head as if evaluating the statement. "I think I am. Did I wake you up?"

"It's fine," she said, trying to evaluate just how drunk he was. "I don't have to do anything tomorrow." 

He frowned at that. "Do you ever think about what you want to do? I mean, you can live here as long as you like, but...don't you ever get bored?"

She set down her phone and flashlight and walked around him, reaching for a glass and filling it with water. "Maybe we should talk about that later, Charlie." She pushed the glass into his hand, and touched his shoulder gently, pushing him into the chair.

"I get bored," he said in a confessional tone. "Well, not bored, exactly. I like being a cop. But…" He trailed off.

"Drink," Rachel told him, "or you're going to have a hell of a headache tomorrow."

He drank obediently. She watched the movement of his throat as he swallowed, and wondered if he was always a confessional sort of drunk or if this was a special occasion. Was it unfair to take advantage of him like this? Or was this what he needed, the chance to finally talk about whatever had left him like this?

At the very least, she decided, she could follow up on things he'd started. That was fair.

"Why are you bored?" she asked when he'd finished half the water.

He looked up at her. "I had a purpose," he said. "When I got out of prison, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to figure out who sent me there and why. And now I have, and I've taken them all down, and there's nothing left. It's just empty."

"There's life," she said, claiming the chair across from him. "That's how most people live."

"I didn't expect to be bored," he said. "I thought once I found the truth, I'd be at peace. I thought knowing would mean I could move on."

"Don't you use Zen for that kind of thing?" she asked. "Isn't it all about finding peace and stuff?"

"The path to peace is right there, when you want to get away," Charlie said, sounding like one of his endless tapes. "The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment."

"So you're saying you should focus on the present."

"That's all there is," Charlie agreed. "Now and now and now." He frowned. "I might be mixing something up there."

Rachel opened her mouth to ask him what happened—who had set him up and what truth he had finally found and how he'd taken them down—but the words that escaped her lips were something else entirely. "I hoped coming back here would bring me peace."

He looked at her solemnly, eyes more focused than she'd thought he was capable of in this state. "I hoped it would, too."

Rachel nearly laughed at that. "Because you thought living in a giant house, basically alone, would bring me peace?" She winced at her own tone. She hadn't meant to go there.

Charlie kept gazed at her steadily, probably seeing more than she really wanted him to. Or maybe seeing exactly what she wanted him to, all the things she hadn't been able to bring herself to say when it looked like he was hurting even more than she was. "I thought knowing you were safe would help. That having somewhere to call home would let you find your path."

"Instead we're both drifting," she said, still sharper than she'd intended to be. She could feel anger like an ember in her chest, and she realized that it had never really gone away: not the anger from being sent away, not the anger from Charlie inviting her here and then disappearing, not the anger from losing her entire family, and not the anger from discovering that the man how had raised her and loved her was the same man who had killed them. It was all still there and she closed her mouth abruptly rather than risk letting it spill out, afraid that it would incinerate them both. She wondered if Charlie could see it anyway, burning under her skin until she was aglow with the force of it. From his expression—careful now, but also weirdly relieved—she thought maybe he could.

"I'm sorry I haven't been here," he said, leaning forward, hands folded on the table like a penitent. "Rachel, I'm sorry for all of it. I'm sorry you had to go. I'm sorry I couldn't bring you peace. I'm sorry your family had to die for me."

He meant it; she could see that clearly. Compassion and sincerity were shining from his face. It washed over her like a healing wave, a balm that soothed the flames of her anger until it was once again a warm ember. Just that, not more. She basked in that peace for a moment—the peace she'd been hoping for all along—and then his final apology penetrated.

"What do you mean, my family died for you?" she asked. "They didn't die for you. I read the stories. My father was laundering money. He got caught. They killed him for it." A simple, straightforward story. It wasn't what she'd expected to learn, but what kid really knew their parents? She clearly hadn't known her father. Either of her fathers.

Charlie shook his head slowly. "Your father never laundered money, Rachel. He wasn't that kind of man. I never should have doubted that. I'm sorry for that, too."

He wasn't making sense, and she wondered if it was the alcohol talking. Maybe Zen sayings weren't the only thing he was mixing up. "What do you mean?"

"There were some people who wanted to get to me, who thought having a dirty cop on their side would help them. They decided the way to get me dirty was to get your father dirty. He was my business partner and they knew that if they could get him, they'd have me. But he refused. And they killed him for it." He looked at her expectantly as he finished, compassion and sincerity replaced by guilt and sorrow, and Rachel realized that he thought she'd blame him for what had happened. That he'd hold her responsible for what other people had wanted to do to him.

"Is that why you've been staying away?" she asked. "Because you thought I'd blame you? Because it's not your fault."

Charlie looked away, but she could see his relief in the slump of his shoulders. "Not just that," he said. Not denying it, she noticed.

"Good," she said, "because that's a stupid reason. Of course it's not your fault. They only went after my father because you were a good cop, right? They knew you wouldn't want to do whatever they wanted. Not unless they had something on you. But they thought you'd do it to help my father."

He nodded.

Rachel stood up, suddenly feeling tired and not sure she was up for further drunken confessions. Maybe this would be enough unburdening to set Charlie right again. And if not, at least she had a place to start now. "Finish your water," she said. "Let's go to bed. We can talk more in the morning." If either of them were up to it, that was.

He picked up the glass and downed the rest of the water. She waited for him, not sure he'd be able to make it up the stairs on his own.

As he set the glass down, his last words returned to her. Maybe she was up for one more confession after all, if it was a necessary one. "What else?" she asked.

He looked at her quizzically, halfway between sitting and standing.

"What's your other reason for staying away?" she clarified. "You said it wasn't just because of my family."

"Because I'm busy fighting crime," he said, pushing his chair back carefully as he straightened up. His tone was light, his expression amused, but she thought she'd seen a flicker of something—and then her realized what she'd seen and her world spun and righted itself at a completely different angle, one where everything looked a little different and possibilities existed that she'd never even considered.

Charlie was already heading unsteadily toward the stairs. "Good night," he called back to her.

"Good night," she replied automatically. She wondered if he knew what she'd seen. If there was any way at all that she'd get him to admit to it. If she even wanted him to.

She ordered her feet to move, to carry her up to her own room. She could hear Charlie singing upstairs, off-key but happy.

It wasn't like she had to do anything now. She had a lifetime of nows ahead of her. She could figure it out later.


End file.
